Books, oh Books!!

My obsession with books started when I was a kid.

Not the “text-book” type of a book, that was a student’s occupational hazard. What fascinated me were books of the story variety. Books which took you away from the routine and into a land of imagination and fantasy. Books which smelt good when they were new (and even when they were old), books whose covers shone with the radiance of a million promises, books which gave endless tactile pleasures. If they had a hardbound, laminated cover you would caress it before opening the book at random and inhaling the ambrosia wafting from within. Books would entertain, engross, educate and mystify.

Books brought you into a mystical communion with writers past and present. Books whose writers were not mere pen-pushers but confidants sharing life’s secrets and mysteries. A book was an entire package of life’s treasures and all its sensual goodness packaged into one volume.

I would ache to possess books. Just to get them into my physical proximity. But the catch was there was no money around to buy these books of my dreams.

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There was this Hindi “Baal pocket books” which advertised itself as a quarterly book-mailing club for kids. You could subscribe to the club’s membership at an equivalent of 10 paise per day.  Remember in those days children’s monthlies, “Parag” and “Nandan”, cost 50 paise each. The government publication “Bal Bharati” cost even lower. “Chanda Mama” and “Lot Pot” we considered infra-dig. “Champak” was too kiddish. While CBT’s “Children’s World” has hardly available in the market. The all-time favourite kiddies books by Enid Blyton were far more expensive. So was Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Three Investigators” series when I grew old enough to fancy them. The hardbound Hardy Boys’ series (there were no paperbacks of these then) were even more expensive.

There was this occasional monetary gift from relatives, initially in paises and then later in rupees. These were assiduously collected in an improvised piggy bank fashioned out of an old tin can. Money saved to purchase a new book. Yes, one long desired book, totally new. Wholly my own. The cheaper the book the better. Not cheap books, I assure you. (I did read some of them- the cheap ones I mean- but that was much later and certainly not with my painstakingly saved money.) I am talking about more-read-for-the-rupee, so to speak.

Some of these low-priced books were primarily sourced from the pavement stalls on Bishtupur Main Road, just opposite Central Bank of India. I refer to the magnificently produced books of a now forgotten publishing house from the then USSR, “Progress Publications, Moscow”. They had these eclectic collection of books right from the illustrated biography  of Lenin (in colour and on glazed paper!) to folktales from the distant corners of the Soviet Union to some excellent textbooks on the sciences. Many a weekend morning and much of one’s savings was expended acquiring these.

Then there was the ever popular and unbelievably inexpensive books from Geeta Prakashan, Gorakhpur. Mostly found at the railway station. That one publishing house which has done pioneering sevice to the spread and dissemination of Hindu religious literature. They also had publications for kids with stories from Ramayan and Mahabharat in a simple-to-understand way or some moral stories with a neatly packaged homily at the end of the story. All-in-all, entertaining, enlightening. And more importantly, very, very inexpensive.

Also available at the railway station were ELBS books, low-priced English language paperbacks from an institution called “English Language Book Society” which had taken upon itself the responsibility of selling low-priced textbooks primarily for the student.  Never mind the binding of these paperbacks wore off after a few weeks of handling. A book was a book, right? How does the fragmentation matter!

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I had the recourse to a substitute to buying books though. Not something which would enable possession of books but certainly I could get to read them. My father was a college lecturer and hence entitled to borrow a number of books from the well-stocked college library. Those were friendly days; no problem if I strolled into the library and borrowed a book or two (or five). The library was at a walking distance from the college staff quarters where I stayed. On Saturdays and during the school summer vacations (the college library was open through the summers) that was the place to be in.

Most of my reading of the classics by Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, Jules Verne etc. is courtesy the college library. And lots and lots of Hindi literature or Hindi translations of world literature. Premchand’s stories and novels,  the magical “Chandrakanta”, “Chandrakanta Santati” and “Bhootnath” series. Translations of Bengali novelists Vimal Mitra and Shankar. Marathi writer Sane Guruji’s “Shyamchi Aai”. Translations of Gorky, Chekhov, Camus etc. I am not sure how much of these I understood, probably nothing, but it was an honour and a pleasure to be holding these tomes and reading away! At the risk of sounding immodest, I admit that I was a bit of a precocious kid. My father, Pitaji, did nothing to discourage me.

Our school too had a most wonderful library which we were allowed to access only when we entered the high school. An extraordinary collection of books! The entire collection of Enid Blytons; all of her series including Mallory Towers  and St Clare’s which we young men thought were oddities in an all boys’ school, but we read them nevertheless. The most-in-demand “Hardy Boys” series and “The Three Investigators” series presented by Alfred Hitchcock. Biggles, Billy Bunter, William. Ripley’s “Believe it or Not”. Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. The mandatory Classics. And tons of other books. And yes, shelves and shelves of text books too.

The library was under the stern supervision of Mrs Irani who could be immensely strict. You were punished if caught even whispering in the library. She would closely examine the books as they were being returned. I shudder to think of the punishment boys would get when they turned in a soiled, or worse still, a dog-eared book. But Mrs Irani could be utterly loving too, in her sweet parsi aunty kind of way. Ah, those endless hours spent in the library pouring through volumes of old National Geographic magazine! And the old, bound editions of Dharmyug. And browsing through Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Sometimes in my early teens, in my pursuit of books, I discovered the “circulating” libraries. These were tucked into the bylanes of the interiors of Bishtupur market, diagonally opposite the famous mithai shop, Manohar Maharaj. These shops lent pulp-fiction for a pittance. And it is here that I got my quota of James Hadley Chase, Harold Robbins, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and Peter Benchley’s Jaws. And so many others. Needless to say that these reading exploits were carefully concealed from my parents- or so I always thought- by covering these books in old newspapers and reading them only when I thought they had gone to sleep! Ah, those heady days of growing up!

Bishtupur also had two book shops, I am not sure whether they exist now. There was this “Sanyal Brothers” up the Bishtupur Main Road which would specialize in fiction and best-sellers. Down the road was “Sen and Co.” which sold mostly text books. These were holy destinations for me, Sanyal more favoured than Sen as it allowed window-shopping and browsing. There was one more shop tucked into the bylanes of the market, not far from the aforementioned circulating libraries. This was actually a fruit juice cum fruit shop turned into a book shop, “Bhatia Pustak Bhandar”. The sardarji there displayed a mouth- watering selection of fruits and books too! The books-cum-gift shop “Wasava Singh” at Kamani center happened much later, when I was in my high school perhaps, maybe even later.

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The situation was not very different in my college days. The financial resources were still scarce, the love for books heightened further. But I had access to some of the best libraries and to some great book shops (for window shopping) in my college days. In those days of discovering myself the reading tastes swung wildly! Ayn Rand was an absolute must for all of us who had even the faintest ambition of being called thinking people. Then reading swung among sci-fi, Vedanta, psychology, politics, Marx, Sartre…. The more ecletic the better. Never mind if I could not understand most of what I read!

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I became totally unhinged in my love for books when I started working and earning a salary. But that is a story for another piece!

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Ponga, pagaar, rokegaa ladeej; an intro to Jamshedpur patois

Section of Jamshedpur Skyline

This post is on the colourful and unique words used in Jamshedpur in the days I was growing up there in the 60’s and the 70’s. Jamshedpur being an industrial town had migrant workers from all over. Bhojpuri speaking people, Maithils, Bengalis, Oriyas, the Andhra people from the northern part of coastal Andhra (called “telangis” in local parlance).  Of course the local adivasis speaking a myriad languages of their own; Ho, Munda, Oraon etc.

This, over time, produced a “language”, mostly unique to Jamshedpur. I list below a few of the words which have stuck in my memory over the decades. This list is by no means a definitive. I am sure there are many more words which I may have missed. I may have even got some meanings not–so-right.

Do read, dear readers, and let me know of other words which would merit a mention in a subsequent similar piece on the Jamshedpur patois.

Ponga:

Ponga refers to a grave sounding loud siren which would go off at periodic intervals thrice a day signaling the start of a fresh shift at TISCO, aka, Tata Company. At 6am, 2pm, 10pm.  These would beckon the Tisco workers to their work, “duty” as it is called. Or colloquially, “diuty”.

Shift:

A ponga heralded the start of a shift. As in an “A’, “B”, or “C” shift. “Shift” here refers not to a general lateral movement, but to the commencement of an eight-hour work period which was announced by a ponga.

The life of Jamshedpur was dictated by these shifts. Guests to a wedding dinner party would excuse themselves early, even before the baraat clarionetted (a clarion commonly called a “kilaat“) and drummed its away to the bride’s house, saying that they had an “A” shift the following day and they had to have an early dinner so that they could be  early to bed, in time for the 6 o’ clock shift. And their wishes were fulfilled with an earlier-than-normal serving of dinner.

Naga:

If the workers were not able to participate in their shifts, they had to perforce take a “naga”, a chhutti.  Commonly called a casual leave, a CL.

Off:

Refers to the weekly break enjoyed by the workers. Each of them had his “off” on different days of the week. Commitments to meet socially depended on the weekly off the workers had. “Kal biyafey hai, hamara off hai. Ham aayengey.” Biyafe being the Bhojpuri word for Brihaspatiwaar or Thursday.

Pagaar:

Pagaar was what the workers received as the rewards for their month’s labours. Pagaar, a salary.  Curiously enough the pagaar was disbursed not on the 1^st of the month, but from the 4^th to 8^th of the month. Each “department” had a specific day for this activity.

And timing themselves with the day, the pathans, or the money-lenders (kabuliwala clones in my growing-up days) would position themselves at the factory gates waiting to recover their dues from the hapless worker who had the misfortune of taking a loan from them.

Double-Pagaar:

Double-pagaar meant the annual Puja bonus the Tisco factory workers received before the commencement of the Puja season. Puja was the time when the entire city went berserk doing purchases. Clothes, appliances, two-wheelers, books, what-have-you! In the weeks after the double-pagaar, the otherwise friendly shopkeepers would not  have even a moment to as much as nod back at you, the tailor would look the other way when his regular patrons requested him to deliver the tailoring in time for shashthi, the neighbouring “hotel-wallah” (called the halwaai in the rest of North India) would smile away deep-frying furiously the singharas and the jalebis.

Double-pagaar time was multiple fun times for the entire populace of Jamshedpur.

Giddu:

This appellation is for humans who are vertically challenged.

“Yeh giddu kya khelega? Ek tho chhotey sa bowl hi uskey liye bouncer hai.”

Gentler versions are “chhotu”, “bauna”.  If there is a gush of affection then the aforesaid bauna may be referred to a baunoo as well. In cases of extreme affection, Giddu would be converted into Gidua as well.

This word was often used depracatingly.

PS: “Tho” is a very Bihar word meaning nothing, just a linguistic crutch like the Bengali “ta”, as in “Ek ta”.

Single-haddi:

An epithet for humans with slighter stature. Patla-dubla in common parlance.  Also meaning durbal, nirbal, and well…. single (haddi). The precursor to the adjective “size- zero”.

Double- haddi:

Someone endowed with a generous weight. Of a healthy disposition. Mota!

“Iss double-haddi goalkeeper key side sey football daal do, goal toh ho hi jayegaa.” (“The corpulent goalie would not be able to move his significant butt before the ball shot through the goalpost”)

Phutani:

An expression for unbecoming pride, vanity. Usually employed in the context of jealousy. “Phutani maarney waala” was a show-off. Rarely a term of endearment.

An explanatory sentence: “ Jab sey bell-bottom pehena shuru kiya hai, badi phutani marta hai”.

An explanatory ditty:

“Hindustani, daal ka paani,

Chutiya rakhkar badi phutani.”

For those uninitiated, Hindustani was an appellation for a Bihari those days. It was often used by the Bengalis whose population in Jamshedpur has always been considerable. Daal ka paani refers to the watery version of Arhar daal which the Biharis relish with their chaawal (or bhaat as they call it). Chutiya can be loosely translated to a ponytail, the little twist of hair at the back of an otherwise clean-shaven pate. I have no idea why a chutiya-endowed Bihari should exude vanity.

The Hindustanis would retaliate against the Bengalis with an equally colourful ditty which went thus:

“Ai Bangali, ting-tingali

Pocha maachh khanewali”

“Oh, ye Bongs, you smelly (rotten) fish-eaters”. My researches have revealed no specific meaning of “ting-tingali”. I suppose it is a device used to rhyme with the subsequent khanewali. As a matter of fact, I do not even know why the feminine khanewali was used.

Dangali:

Dangali refers to the branch of a tree. Dangali katna was a regular acitivity with families with overgrown guava, jamun or katahal trees in their backyards (more likely “front” yards). Katna= cutting, pruning.

The humble dangali too has it own uses!

Like the time in the early centuries of Anno Domini when the celebrated Sanskrit dramatist Kalidas was seen sawing-off the very dangali he was perched on. This led to a series of multiple events culminating in his marriage to a haughty princess. And the rest, as they say, is history (and literature!).

Thonga:

In those years before plastics, thonga was a paper container used to pack commodities in the local grocer’s shop. Thonga means a paper bag. This would be made of either old newspapers or with pristine brown paper sheets.

Thonga is not to be confused with the suffix “tho” which has an altogether different meaning as mentioned earlier. But it was ok to say “ek tho thonga”.

Butru.

Sometimes spelt as buturu as well.

This refers to a young lad, a male child. Often a child worker at a dhaba or at a roadside tea-stall. “Ei butru, yeh tabul ponchh (wet-wipe the table) do”, “ei butru zara ek cigarette khareed lao”.

The usage of butru was not confined to such workers but used for other kids too. “E butru o marad ka hai na?” (“This kid belongs to that chap”)?

Some butrus were even addressed as babuas, or babus. The female equivalent of a babua was buchia, a buchunia, or even a babuni. I do not know of a similar gender conversion with butru roots. Maybe female butrus those days were impossible to find in a road-side tea stall.

And finally,

“Rokegaa, ladeej”

Mini-buses were the blessing- or the scourge- those days, depending on how you saw them. Those early days of these devilish vehicles. They would torment all the road users.  With their very “artistic” swerves from the left of the road to the right or even vice versa.

And they had given themselves licenses to stop in the middle of nowhere should the conductor, or more commonly the khalasi (the bus attendant) feel like it. The khalasi was that guy swinginging on the door handle -mostly outside the confines of the minibus- trying to guide the destiny of the vehicle. And its passengers. He would shout and whistle for the minibus to stop, even in the middle of the road, should he spot a potential lady passenger.

“Rokegaa, Ladeej”!

Monsoon Mazaa

Driving to work on an unusually rainy morning, I could not help but remember the single biggest joy of monsoons in my school days; heavy rains meant closure of the school for the day. But the catch was that in those days of scant telephone connectivity, most students did not have a phone and no way they could find out, or be told regarding the school closure. So while some parents would take quick guesses and take what they thought was the appropriate decision (staying away from school), the others would force their kids to walk/cycle to school assuming it would be open. But this misery of the trek in the rains was short-lived when they discovered the school was closed. I have this memory of the Irish-American priest, the popular Father Roberts, standing at the entrance to the school with a dripping umbrella and spreading this cheering news of school closure to the kids. It is another matter that sometimes even with the most torrential downpour, the school would remain open and those who had guessed that the school would be closed would miss the classes. Which, as far as the students were concerned, was most welcome anyway!

Schools and rain brings to mind the raincoat. No school kid’s bag was complete without a rain coat. For some reason few used umbrellas, it was raincoats for most of us. Those who could afford it would use the greenish-yellow Duckback brand raincoats. But for most of us it was the regulation grey plastic affair. I wonder why there were no alternate colours, just a metallic grey. Ok, perhaps a shiny black as well. No yellows or blues or greens. And certainly no floral prints you see nowadays. The raincoat, when dry, would be packed into a polythene bag (a rare commodity those days of paper bags and jholas!). This would be carried in the school bag. If it was raining I was made to don the “coat” over the schoolbag slung on my shoulders, forming a neat camel-like bulge at the back! When we reached school this rain coat was hurriedly wrapped and tucked back into its plastic bag, water and all. The creased, wet raincoat when pulled out later in the day on its return journey home would look like a post-modern Dali; creased along crazy curves and dripping with water! But this was donned anyway. No raincoat was ever complete without the cap. That matching headgear with long, long flaps on the sides to cover the ears. The flaps affixed by metal press-buttons under the chin, sometimes very discomfortingly if the flaps were a little too short. Often the buttons would come un-affixed from their plastic substrate, “safety” pins were used as a substitute or the flap-fixing was completely dispensed with. And there was often the spectacle of the arm piece getting un-“welded” from the torso piece, it was a plastic apparel after all.

The walk back from school on a wet afternoon was a journey by itself. There were enough puddles on the way into which we would jump up and down. Never mind the shoes we were wearing becoming totally soggy. By the time we were half-way home, the wet sock against the shoe would make a squeaky noise which was a source of delight by itself! Cheek-peek, cheek-peek.. and so on it went..! Of course we got admonished on our return home. Considering we had only one pair of black school shoes. And limited pairs of uniforms. The uniforms would be taken care of by some intelligent and dexterous ironing to dry the moisture and get the creases in place, but the shoes were another story. One could not iron shoes, and they remained wet till the morning after. And that necessitated a message from parents to the teacher, making some excuse or the other. “Injured toe” was a common one. With an appropriately “bandaged” toe as the evidence under a pair of slippers the next morning. The teachers would laugh, they knew from years of experience of teaching. And most also had children of my age!!

Then, as they say, the field was open for activities. When we were real kids, sailing paper boats on puddles was a big delight. Paper was sourced from the most easily accessible class notebook! And when we really grew up, the pastime was something more lethal! That sharpened short steel stake which was used for digging garden soil. Two kids would start at a point, turn by turn with this weapon. Each would throw the length of steel on the soft soggy ground to ensure it would impale itself on it. This would go on, turn-by-turn, till someone missed. And then the winner would assign a suitable punishment to the loser. I have an unfortunate permanent reminder of this monsoon game, the stake landed on one of my toes once. The nail’s gone, the pains forgotten, but the scar still remains. With that remains the memories of the Jamshedpur monsoon.

And on the way we enjoyed “catching” those little red velvety insects, I do not know what they are called. Ladybirds? But I am sure they had more picturesque name in Hindi.

What is a monsoon without its distinctive snacks! Onion pakodas of course, but the real treat was the sauteed-in-mustard-oil black gram (kala chana). With a sprinkling of pepper powder and salt. I suppose this is popular only in Bihar. This chana was chewed upon as you watched the rains pouring down! Never mind if bits of it got stuck between your teeth.  It was divine! Not to mention the “bhutta”. Not the boiled stuff you get in Bangalore, but the nicely roasted ones! With a generous coating salt administered with a grubby-looking piece of lemon!

Maybe, one day I should declare a rainy day for myself and bunk my office. I will then sit in the balcony, get myself a roasted bhutta and watch the world go by through sheets of rains!

Chalo, Mela dekhein (चलो, मेला देखें)!

One of the most sought after events of the annual calendar was the Ganpati festival, popularly called Ganesh Puja. This was not due to any religious fervour, the attraction being the associated  mela with the Puja. All publicly celebrated Hindu festivals have a carnival-like atmosphere around them. Durga Puja, Saraswati Puja, Vishwakarma puja and Kali Puja, no Puja is complete without the loud film songs on the PA system, the eateries and the toy-wallahs. But the Ganesh Puja mela of Jamshepdur was something else altogether. While virtually each street corner had their Ganesh pujas, the Puja I am talking about is the one which was celebrated in the Kadma area.

To start with, for a kid, the focus of this Ganesh Puja was on the mela and not on the puja. Unlike, say, Durga Puja, where moving from pandal-to-pandal and admiring different versions of Goddess Durga’s statue and the pandal decor. Worship being the focus during Saraswati Puja. Ganesh puja was total mela, total fun.

The fun lay in the multiple “stalls” laid out around the Ganesh Puja pandal. These would start springing up weeks before the D-day. They were the standard ones, but that did not stop us from feverishly anticipating them as the day neared. Little tarpaulin-covered stalls ready to unleash their magic!

Nandan Kanan Kala Bhavan (नंदन कानन कला भवन) was the major attraction in the mela. This was a most wondrous collection of clay statues magically brought to life by ingenious use of electric motors. The statues dealt largely with scriptures and mythology, like Ram’s vanvaas, Sita’s agni-pariksha etc. They would be so constructed that each limb or part of the body could “move” at a pre-determined trajectory, repetitively. For example take this tableux of the treatment meted out to a sinner when he reached hell. There would be this petrified sinner sitting right in the middle with two fiercely mustachioed, bare-torsoed  giants on either side of him. The giants would hold a mean-looking hacksaw with which they would proceed to decapitate their victim. Their movements were programmed to move in unison with the hacksaw going through the pre-slitted throat of the sinner. Rrrrriiippp, they would move left, and then return to their starting point, stopping with a shudder. And Rrrrriiippp again, this time to the right. And so on it went ad infinitum. The thick red “blood” oozing out of the throat was life-like, the burning eyes of the giants enough to scare the daylights out of a kid. We would be petrified and would stay rooted to the tableux, till the exhibitors nudged us along to the next one. Which would probably be an equally blood-curdling one like this one about an alternate punishment for the sinner, getting dunked into a large karahi of boling oil! As I would exit the “Kala Bhavan” I would solemnly resolve to myself not to commit any sin, not even an innocuous lie.

It was time then to go into some light-hearted stuff. The hall of mirrors. This was an array of mirrors of different curvatures placed alongside the walls of the stall. In one mirror you would look very fat, very thin and tall in the other. And then in the third, you could see multiple images of yourself. And a totally contorted image of your body in the fourth. None of the images ever failed to evoke delirious laughter among us kids! I had not studied optics then, and indeed not even physics. So, there was no urge to figure out the curvature of mirrors. Sheer, unadulterated joy of seeing distorted images of your body! And your friends’!!

From mirth and laughter it was time to move on to some real action. The ever scintillating “Maut Ka Kuwan” (मौत का कुआँ). Or the “Well of Death”. Just 25 paise for the show! The well was an overground one, maybe 70-80 feet tall and about 25 feet in diameter, a creeky wooden structure laid out for the mela. The spectators would climb up on the rickety staircase constructed on the outside of the wall and peer into the well below. And- after what seemed like hours-  the motorcycle rider rode in, on the “floor” of the well. The biker would circle all around the periphery of the well and then with a sudden swift movement, clamber onto the wall of the well. Yes, nearly perpendicular to the wall to start with and then navigate his way to the upper part of the wall -totally perpendicular to it. Why did I say “he”? It was often a “she”! Round-and-round the biker would go. The bike would make a raucous sound on its ambulations and the well would shake and rattle resonating the motion of the bike. Adding to the effect the show was having on us, the spectators, clinging to the parapet on the top of the well watching the spectacle below. Sight, sound and vibrations. What a sensory delight! The biker would swoop up at nearly a handshake distance from the spectators leaving all squealing in delight. Biker number one was often joined by another biker, but of the opposite sex. Each dressed in flashy silk shirt/ blouse. The whirr of the silk, the sound of the bike and the rumbling of the well “wall”. The denoument when they scaled up the wall with a ferocious speed nearly within the reach of the spectators whose collective hearts skipped several beats! And then the time to wind down and descend to the safety of terra firma. Boy, that was some experience, each time!

Then there was the next one. The one which allowed kids to behave like “studs” by themselves! The jhoola. The innocuous jhoola was a major one to display one’s “abilities”. It was a wooden four-cradle affair being spun manually by the jhoola-wallah. 4 to a cradle, 16 in total. The jhoola-wallah would initially give a few slow spins to all the “travelers” and check if each one of us was feeling OK. No nausea etc. Sure enough, the tough ones amongst us would say, OK, and rarely, if anyone, demurred. And then began the rapid whirl. Each as exhilarating as the other. Remember there were no electric jhoolas those days. Grunts and shrieks and hands clinging tight to the cart handles. The more adventurous ones amongst us (not me!!) would throw down their ‘kerchiefs down on the ground on the way up and then lean down and pick it up on their way down. There were even competitions among friends as to who would pick-up the most drops of the ‘kerchief! Till the jhoola-wallah slowed down and let all of us off cart-by-cart to accommodate the next batch of the impatient queuing “passengers”!

The mela also had a chidiyaghar (चिडियाघर) a zoo. With some very tired looking tigers, lions and hippos among many others. The biggest attraction for all of us- Jamshedpur had no permanent zoo till then- were the multiple species from the simian family. Those multi-coloured bandars!

What is a mela without toys and food! After the excitement of these shows was over, it was time for some snacks. Golgappas, of course, were the most popular. And the side-dish of ghughni. Some even preferred the tikki and aloo chat. Some of the off-beat ones were Sohan Papdi, khaja (a very Bihari sweet) and . The popular peanuts, or chiniya-badaam as we call them in Jamshedpur, were handy snacks as we strolled around the mela. Then there were cart-loads of ice-cream, Kwality being the most popular brand.

Then there was these toys to be bought. There were the standard mela ones. Like the yo-yo. That water-filled rubber balloon tied to a rubber chord. You would twirl the chord around your fingers and throw the balloon down only to pick it up on its way back. Up, down, up, down. Till the balloon ruptured and sprayed its contents, water, all over the observers. And the damroo. And the modern-day damroo equivalent. The one with no name which I call the rat-tat-tat toy. And the metal tic-tic-tic toy. Looked like a whistle sheared into a half with a lip to press and depress alternately to give its defining “clack-ety” sound. And my favoritest of all- the spring monkey. A plastic monkey slung on a tightly wound spiral chord held securely on a frame. I would go berserk on the spring monkey. Holding the contraption down so that it slithered down. And then overturning the contraption so that the monkey went the other way. And back-and-forth, and forth-and-back. Endless hours of entertainment.

When I went to Jamshedpur for the Durga Puja last year I had resolved to buy a few of these spring monkeys. I found none. Even after a major hunt across several Puja pandals, by the entire family.

And then I realized, that was a bit of my childhood lost, forever! Gone!!

Those Postal Stationeries!

Saumya's tribute to the Indian Postal Service

In this era of emails which have become the primary method of correspondence, how many of us actually sit down and write our letters? Write as in with ink and paper! And if you do, do you use the range of postal stationery which is available? Well, I do not, in fact all my correspondence is done via emails. Emails may make for rapid communication, but they can’t quite capture the romance of letter-writing. Letters capture the personality of the letter-writer, the stationery used, the colours, and of course the hand writing.

This post is not on the romance of letter writing but on the variety of postal stationery from the olden days. Most of these are still used but I can bet that most of us would not have used them in the recent years.

When was the last you wrote or received a postcard? Such a popular means of communication in the old days. A post card which barely has space to accommodate some twenty or thirty words. Some letter-writers had mastered the art of stretching this space to include the contents of an A4 sheet by scribbling all around the corners, often at impossible angles to the main text. Sometimes even spilling over into the address panel. which occupied one-quarter of the total area available. Perhaps they thought that the address panel was a waste of space!

There was an ingenious variant to the post card, the “jawaabi” post card, or return postcard. Twice the size of a normal postcard, folded half-way, each half a postcard. You would write your stuff on one card and leave the other blank except for filling in your own name and address. This was used when you thought the addressee whose reply was sought would be too imperious, or too lazy or too impoverished to source a postcard for a reply.

In my childhood, the postcard would cost 5 paise (or naye paise as it was then called). And this price held for long. My father, a regular letter writer, used to buy bunches of postcards on which he wrote his letters to his friends and students. He uses these cards even now- though not as often- in keeping with his  Gandhian philosophy of frugality.

Next in hierarchy was the inland letter (“antardeshiya patra”) for slightly more detailed correspondence. This blue coloured sheet- the shade of blue varying over the years- had a peculiar contour. It had dotted lines running across telling you where to fold the sheet of paper to form it into a compact “envelope-y” shape for its onward journey. And helpfully it was pre-gummed so just a lick of the tongue and the inland was as secure as a sealed envelope. The gumming would come unstuck pretty often and you would often receive an ‘open” inland. If you were lucky to receive one with the seal intact then a deft maneuver of the forefinger through the folds of the inland would open it up but not before tearing away the edges! And if you slit open the other edge, you got a jigsaw of a letter! Which often happened to letters which you desperately anticipated! (We shall not discuss the nature of these letters in this post!!). The inland costs thrice as much as the postcard, 15 paise!

Then there was this stately cream-colored envelope or “lifafa”. With a neatly embossed Ashoka emblem adorning the top right corner. It was sparingly used, only if some important documents had to be sent. For example sending the horoscope, bio-data and the picture of the prospective bride to the boy’s parents. In some cases, it was even “registered” with an additional postage to ensure safe delivery. And if you really wanted to know that the envelope had reached its destination, you posted it “Registered with AD”; AD standing for “acknowledgement due”. The AD card – filled in with your own address- would be stitched to the envelope. The postman would take the signature of the addressee on the AD card and duly return it to the sender via the postal system. However, since the AD card itself was not registered, you could never be sure of getting it back.

There was one hell of an ingenious way of ensuring a secure arrival. Instead of paying extra to register your mail, you would actually under stamp it. So if a bulging envelope needed 60 paise worth of stamps, you would affix only 50 paise worth. The postman would ensure that this difference was made good, and more, by the addressee who would end up paying the balance 10 paise and another 10 paise as a fine. Of course the addressee had the choice of not accepting it at all. This was called a “bearing” letter in postal terminology. And commonly berang in Hindi-fied English. This Hindi word literally means colourless which I thought was a rather unfortunate word for something so ingenious and, well, colourful.

There was an interesting reverse of the AD business- UCP- Under Certificate of Posting. To be used in cases where the arrival of the letter at the destination was not as important as the confirmation from the originating post office that the letter had indeed been delivered to them for its onward journey. For instance proof that you had submitted your report to the head-office. This facility was cleverly used by the parents of a hostel mate of mine. The son claimed that he wrote regular letters and it was the vagaries of the Indian Postal Service which made the letters disappear mid-way. This guy was actually not writing letters and made up this excuse. The anxious parents finally got a clever idea. This chap was instructed to send all his letters UCP!

Another interesting stationery item sold at the post office was the money order form, money order being the cheapest and easiest way to transfer money. You would buy a long-long form, thick and yellowing with the dull grey bilingual printing barely visible. You would fill up the form and submit the remittance along with the processing charges (commission) to the postal clerk. In course of time, the recipient at the other end would have his own postman calling-in and handing over the cash. Simple! I remember the agonized wait for the postman in the first week of the month desperately awaiting the month’s allowances from home when I was staying in a hostel! Most postmen expected a tip from the recipient of the money order!

The email and internet has slowly taken over these functions. The basic email substituting the postcard and the inland, the lifafa replaced by the “attachment” facility available in all email services, and money transfer possible with just a few clicks.  But, can an email replace the joy (and anxiety) of anticipating the postman on his daily rounds carrying his bagful of goodies?